


another world

by iron_spider



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A4 Speculation, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Endgame Speculation, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-25 18:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17730791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iron_spider/pseuds/iron_spider
Summary: Tony floats in space and feels manic, feels out of body, can hardly look at Nebula when she askswas he your son?Tony says no, but it isn’t right. He can’t find the words to describe Peter Parker. When he was alive Tony called him a pain in the ass. Now that feels like a thousand pinpricks, a punch in the gut. Tony doesn’t know what to call him here, here in dark despair and endless frailty, since he’s dust, a memory. In his mind he calls him precious. He calls him important.Thekid.Mykid. Out loud he calls him dead, and it flays his throat.





	another world

Tony can’t leave Peter in the past.

There’s too much pain there, enough to swallow the ghost of him whole. Tony can’t leave him there, can’t leave him dust, dead, can’t leave him in nothingness, the dense void of _gone_. Tony can’t leave him in that silence. 

He floats in space and feels manic, feels out of body, can hardly look at Nebula when she asks _was he your son?_ Tony says no, but it isn’t right. He can’t find the words to describe Peter Parker. When he was alive Tony called him a pain in the ass. Now that feels like a thousand pinpricks, a punch in the gut. Tony doesn’t know what to call him here, here in dark despair and endless frailty, since he’s dust, a memory. In his mind he calls him precious. He calls him important. _The_ kid. _My_ kid. Out loud he calls him dead, and it flays his throat. 

When he thinks he’s wasting away, he’s glad. He’s glad his sorrow will seep out into the universe, far away from the wisps of the life he loved on earth. He’s glad the kid is gone, because watching him starve and suffer before death finally took him would have been worse than the pain he already carries in the core of his chest. That is enough. He can’t take more.

But it stings. The idea of Peter dead, gone, silent, silent like the darkness all around them, is abhorrent. It’s wrong. It’s the opposite of their everyday lives, the kid slamming upstairs, whipping open fridge doors, laughing and wheezing enough to make a smile split across Tony’s face. The silence from Peter’s death carries itself across the galaxy and drapes itself over Tony’s broken, dying body, and he can feel Nebula’s eyes on him from across the small ship. She thinks he’s given up. She thinks their plans are all failures, that he’ll die and leave her alone here. A useless husk. But Tony feels that silence, stiffening around him and gripping his arms.

A call for help. 

Peter Parker isn’t quiet. This is wrong. Tony can’t leave it, he can’t leave him, even if he’s gone. It’s unacceptable.

Tony gets to his feet.

The silence makes them weave miracles, and Peter’s voice starts whispering all around him. Thoughts in smoky tendrils, too kind, still too quiet. Tony wonders if Nebula can hear it too or if he’s finally relenting to the insanity, and when he realizes she doesn’t he tries not to answer. The kid sounds far away, and Tony’s far away too. But getting closer. Closer and closer.

~

Pepper touches him like she doesn’t know him, and then she collides with him like she does. He feels separated from his own body, like two people working hand in hand to power his legs and his arms, letting out stilted replies to the questions that come his way while his brain works overtime on more important things.

He has to talk to people he doesn’t like. He has to answer to dickwads and good-for-nothings, and someone says _you’re lucky. You didn’t lose anyone._

He collapses behind closed doors after that, in pain and sadness and terror and pure, all -encompassing grief. Pepper is there. Rhodey is there. And Steve Rogers is there, and Tony’s heart doesn’t skip a beat when it comes to forgiveness. Not now, not after this. Not with so much ash in the air and loss clinging to all of them.

It’s worse, here. Worse, because it’s too loud, so the undeniable silence is loud too, and everywhere, rushing like a violent waterfall. Peter sounded far away on the ship but now Tony can’t hear him at all, and he wonders if he was closer to him there because he was closer to death. Surrounded by silence. Silence. 

Peter’s death lives on the backs of his eyes. The dust, the fear, the apologies. In flashy Technicolor, on repeat, loud, loud, _screaming._

The _I’m sorry_ warps into _you failed me._

He can’t have his own children because he can’t protect them. He’s a shell of himself, and everything he might have wanted once is impossible. He can see Titan. Red dust and a lost civilization. Ghosts. Unfamiliar, and far too important. Pepper stays, but he’s failing her too. He’s failing everyone with every day of non-action. With every day he can’t solve this, can’t bring them back. Can’t set it right.

All the happy memories go blurry, blurry with his tears and his horror and the way he can’t find anything to hold onto, even though he has Pepper, he has Rhodey, he has Happy and Steve and his goddamn bots and _you didn’t lose anyone, Stark. You’re lucky, you’re lucky—_

May doesn’t hit him, and he wishes she would. She brings more silence. Dark rings under her eyes from worry, from the realization of worst fears, and when he tells her she doesn’t hit him, she just lets her sorrow overwhelm her, wracking, tortured sobs. She doesn’t say it’s his fault. But the silence all around them does. 

The Parker apartment hurts, a pulsing reminder of _without_. Peter is in photographs. He’s in books and the checked tablecloth and the rip in the couch and the tan curtains, the faded stain on the carpet. He’s blinking on the answering machine. He’s a half-eaten ice cream cake in the freezer. He’s his own closed door, a weak light shimmering in the crack between it and the floor, like he could be in there, right now, if they wished hard enough. He’s loud, blaring, everywhere. He’s quiet. He’s gone. He’s dead.

~

Months and years separate them. The life Peter could have had runs parallel to the one Tony is wallowing in, the one Tony is wasting, the one he would trade in a heartbeat just to see the kid’s face again. But he’s history, he’s a memory, he’s stuck behind the wall of then and now and that thought still feels broken, unfinished, incorrect. 

Tony isn’t at home in his own city, his own place, his own bed, his own skin. He is unraveled. 

~

 _Can you still hear him?_ Nebula asks, one day, when they’re surrounded by piles of books and too many unanswered questions. 

Peter’s voice started off far away, in the depths of space and close to the edge of death, a whisper, a suggestion. A calming memory. Then it was screaming silence, guilty silence, thick like a shroud and stifling Tony’s every breath.

Now, five years later, it’s everything. Everywhere. Words upon words upon words, everything Peter ever said, everything he ever thought about saying, everything he would say if he was here, criss-cross-applesauce on the corner of the carpet that he likes, with a spoon of peanut butter in his mouth. Everything he would say always, about everything, every moment, and sometimes he gets too loud but it’s better than the rushing void of his death. It’s almost like he’s still here. 

“I hear him now,” Tony says, flipping through the book Wong gave him, too heavy and rough in his hands. 

_—then Ned brought this weird extra piece, he said he found it at the registers but like, I had no idea why he thought we could include—_

_—would be the best idea, I mean, you would always fall asleep on the fourth Rocky and even though that like, offends me, I think you should—_

_—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—_

_—no, you’re the best, but you’re really bad at volleyball and I think you need to admit it—_

_—PLEASE, IT’S ME, IT’S REALLY ME, I’M LOST, THE REST ISN’T REAL BUT THIS ONE, THIS ONE IS ME, MR. STARK, IT’S ME, HELP ME, HELP, PLEASE—_

_—no, I don’t want that. No, stop trying to make me eat salad. I don’t—you said steak! You said—_

_—I’m not gonna throw my cap because I don’t wanna lose it, I could throw it too far and never find it again and it’s the one souvenir I want out of graduation—_

Tony chews on his lower lip and sways a little bit, dizzy under everything, all of it. “I can’t leave him there,” he says. “I can’t leave him in the dark.”

_—LISTEN, LISTEN, PLEASE LISTEN, HELP ME, HELP, I’M ALL ALONE, I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM BUT—PLEASE, PLEASE HELP ME, TONY, PLEASE—_

“Tony,” Pepper’s voice says, from behind them. Tony flips a page, the sharp edge of it slicing across his thumb. Dark red blood drops in a perfect circle right on top of the word _vortex._

“Yeah?” Tony asks, the pleading still ringing in his ears. Tears gather in his eyes. He can’t rest, he can’t, he wants to and he doesn’t. 

“Scott Lang is here,” she says. “Ant-Man. He thinks—he thinks he has an idea.”

Tony remembers what the therapist said. That you can’t beat death, you can’t solve it, it isn’t a rubix cube to palm and twist and toss across the room in bouts of frustration. She told him to mourn Peter, to remember him instead of clinging so tight to impossible things, like changing the past. 

But Peter belongs here. Tony can see him so clearly. Everywhere, doing everything, and when Tony looks up he can see a vision of himself there, too. The two of them on the blue couch, both with books in their hands, and Peter laughs at something, nudging into Tony’s shoulder and holding out the page in question.

Tony can’t even remember what it’s like to smile like that. 

They’re gossamer, phasing, and everything Peter’s saying in his head narrows down to one phrase, clear and true. 

_I’m here. I’m here. I’m right here._

He thinks about goddamn Ant-Man and the vision gains clarity. A future, another world. A time where he did things right.

Tony gets to his feet.

“Okay,” he says, looking at Nebula. “Let’s go talk to him.”


End file.
